[Hawkular-dev] Fwd: [hawkular-dev] Grafana querying usability

[Thomas Segismont]

No, I really meant 1/. With a single text field mixing tag filters and
names. Or did I misunderstood the idea?

It might be worth taking a look at InfluxDB's datasource code. IIRC, they
let you switch between guided (with many specific text fields) and
freestyle (query language) mode.

2017-01-18 10:29 GMT+01:00 Joel Takvorian <jtakvori at redhat.com>:

> Thomas, I think you mean the "2b" proposal? (with a simple text field to
> type custom query in). I can't see how to provide auto-completion with
> that. I think if we go this way, we loose auto-completion.
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 10:25 AM, Thomas Segismont <tsegismo at redhat.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 1/ sounds best to me, as it would give users the power of a query
>> language. But auto-completion could be quite a challenge there, couldn't it?
>>
>> 2017-01-18 9:54 GMT+01:00 Joel Takvorian <jtakvori at redhat.com>:
>>
>>> Hi everybody,
>>>
>>> I would like to get some opinions on the hawkular-grafana-datasource
>>> querying usability, especially if you had the opportunity to create
>>> dashboards recently and had to juggle with querying by metric name and by
>>> tag.
>>>
>>> Currently the panel displays different elements depending on you're
>>> querying by metric name (see picture: https://raw.githubusercontent.
>>> com/hawkular/hawkular-grafana-datasource/master/docs/images/
>>> search-by-name.png )
>>>
>>> Querying by name is quite straightforward, but it can be cumbersome when
>>> there's a lot of available metrics and you have to scroll among suggestions
>>> to find the one you want.
>>> ​
>>>
>>> Or by tag  (see picture: https://raw.githubusercontent.
>>> com/hawkular/hawkular-grafana-datasource/master/docs/images/
>>> search-by-tag.png )
>>>
>>> ​
>>> The "query by tag" interface is not very intuitive IMO (you define a
>>> list of key-value pairs), moreover to this date there is no auto-completion
>>> on tag name.
>>>
>>> There's been some features in metrics recently that, I think, can enable
>>> a better UI on Grafana side. First, there is Micke's feature "Allow
>>> fetching of available tagNames" [1] that enables suggestions
>>> (auto-completion) on tag name. And most importantly there's the new "tag
>>> query language" that could (should) have its place in Grafana.
>>>
>>>
>>> So I would have several suggestions for improving the UI and queries.
>>>
>>> *1*: First of all I think we can remove the "Search by name" / "Search
>>> by tag" selector, and allow searching by name AND by tag at the same time:
>>> providing tags would refine the available metrics in the metrics text field
>>> suggestions (auto-completion). If this text field is left blank, all
>>> available metrics are displayed.
>>>
>>> Then, there's several scenarios to take advantage of the new hawkular
>>> metrics features:
>>>
>>> *2a*: keep current key/value pairs system, but improve with adding
>>> suggestion on tag names.
>>>
>>> *2b*: replace key-value pairs with the new tags query, via a simple
>>> text field:
>>>
>>>
>>> We may or may not include syntax validation here. We must provide some
>>> documentation on that.
>>>
>>> *2c*: replace key-value pairs with the new tags query, with a dedicated
>>> "builder" UI:
>>>
>>> ​Each of these boxes in tags query would have a contextual
>>> auto-completion feature:
>>> - suggestions on 1: list of tag keys
>>> - suggestions on 2: list of operators (=, !=, IN, NOT IN)
>>> - suggestions on 3: list of tag values for the given key (with some
>>> slights differences on brackets if it's the first element or not; closing
>>> bracket as a choice if it's not the first element)
>>> - suggestions on 4: operators AND / OR
>>> ​
>>>
>>> The 2b option is obviously simpler, very fast to implement. It has the
>>> downside of loosing all auto-completion capabilities, even compared to the
>>> current version.
>>>
>>> 2c looks nicer and more intuitive in its usage, people won't have to
>>> read the doc to use it. However there's several downsides:
>>>   - Need to implement the logic => need for time for development, adds
>>> complexity to our grafana plugin.
>>>   - Introduces a dependency to the language on server side. When the
>>> language evolves, we'll have to maintain this as well.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ideas & thoughts? I think it's preferable to proceed in several steps.
>>> In a first time I could implement *1* and *2a*, and later (and maybe
>>> giving some time to the language to be "stabilized") going with *2c*.
>>>
>>> [1] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/HWKMETRICS-532
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Joel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> hawkular-dev mailing list
>>> hawkular-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hawkular-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
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